Problem with AutoCAD Electrical Startup and Accessing Project Database

[evan_dorvalR4TC9]

I have been working on an AutoCAD Electrical project for the last few weeks, and it has been working totally fine. This morning when I tried to open it, I got a screen (see the first attachment) for several minutes, before I got the FATAL ERROR message (second attachment).

I opened Task Manager, and it looks like something is going on with the first line item (third attachment), because when I end the task, it seems to exit the weird screen from the first attachment, but then it shows that the software cannot reach the project database, and none of the functions related to the project work properly, and I get a message in the command line that says "Problem opening database file or doesn't exist, filename= %11".

After this error, I deleted the project database and ran the AEREBUILDDB command, but it did not seem to do anything, as the command was done almost immediately, with no waiting time. I still cannot use any commands related to the project database.

Any help or pointers would be very helpful!

[james.mcmillanNYR6A]

Repair your microsoft access database engine

[sthomassr]

Thank You for the reply! It fixed mine as well. We are having this issue across a couple of different sites. All using Autocad Electrical.

[evan_dorvalR4TC9]

How do you do that?

[sthomassr · Accepted solution]

[evan_dorvalR4TC9]

That worked, thank you both!

[ericbouwkamp]

We are experiencing issues with this today as well. On multiple computers. We cannot correlate this to a common update. We fixed with reinstalling the redistributable but would like to know root cause. This Access Redistributable 2010/2016 has been a common issue for far too long.

[lee_kirkup]

We are having the same issue across the whole company, 3 cities in 2 different countries.
No rhyme or reason as to why its happened, but can confirm that repairing the DB engine listed above does fix it.
Whilst trying to investigate the root cause of the issue, I can only put it down to an Antivirus update.
I would be interested to know what AV the above users are using when this issue happened.  We are using Trend Micro.

[eric.j.bouwkamp]

We are using Microsoft Defender

[james.mcmillanNYR6A]

3rd party but windows defender has switched itself on again

[NDwelley6236T]

We were having the same issue as well! to whoever intiially posted this THANK YOU! this post saved our company a ton of downtime. This is why these forums exist. 

I can also confirm that so far repairing, or in some cases where the engine appears to just be "gone" from the users computer, a re-install fixes as well. I did also tend to notice that one windows 11 machines.. the engine was just gone, while on windows 10 machines it just needed a repair. That wasn't 100% but it was a better than 60%.

I did a little digging yesterday, and it looked like something similar happened with the access engine a few years ago with a background office update. It is odd that it was just "everywhere/all at once". 

Thanks again to everyone that chipped in on this post. 

#KEEPCALMANDCADON

[ericbouwkamp]

It shouldn't need the redistributable if you have office installed. The problem is this keeps happening. I'm not sure when AutoDesk is going to finally move away from using Access as a backbone, but it needs to be soon.

[rhesusminus]

I know when! Never.

[gborsosRKDDR]

Unfortunately, I am still having issues.  My db was gone!  I un-installed ACADE, re-installed, it was still missing.  Installed redistributable 2016 and still having issues.  

Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

[gborsosRKDDR]

Funny thing is that Autocad works fine.  Its just Electrical.

[NDwelley6236T]

I did notice that there were some cases, after the engine re-install that it took a few minutes, and or a restart for it to start working again.

[gborsosRKDDR]

Duh.  That worked.  Thanks.

[sergehenry]

Even after the reboot of your computer ?

[sergehenry]

Perfect....maybe we need to restart the computer sometimes....

[evan_dorvalR4TC9]

So renewing this issue, I had a few of the same problems last week, and using the repair function worked correctly. Now, I'm getting it with each launch, every day, and I still can't get it to work. Are there any other repairs for this issue?